Over the last decades, traffic safety problems, connected with horizontal road-markings, have been rather inadequately solved by the use of either short-lived strips, applied by spraying a solvent-liquified material onto the road surface, or by using a long-lived thermoplastic material applied to the road surface in the liquid state. At a certain point, special machines--which are now in use all over the world--were developed for making the spray application of road-markings rapid. With the advent of the type of road-marking with a long service life, the market slowly began to become saturated. The available machines became insufficiently utilized and the degree of safety on the roads, in connection with horizontal road-markings, became altogether unsatisfactory.
Over a considerable number of years, the Applicant has developed methods and products regarding horizontal road-markings. In particular, and by way of example, the following are cited: Italian Pat. No. 1,022,451 and its corresponding U.S. Pat. No. 4,069,281, Italian Pat. No. 28747 A/76, applied for on Oct. 27, 1976, and its corresponding U.S. Pat. No. 4,236,950.
The products covered by these patents, consisting in horizontal road-marking strips, have numerous advantages over the spray type road-marking, as the high efficiency during many years, efficiency which may be improved for obtaining a better visibility also in rainy weather by means of the application on the strips, also during their manufacturing, of improved retroreflecting elements, which are also covered by numerous inventions of the applicant.
These superior prefabricated strips provide a high degree of road safety; but despite the outstanding results obtained with them, they are not in a very wide use, not only because of their higher cost, but also because of the need of new considerable investments in new laying-down apparatuses, while such investments are quite problematical in the light of the overabundance of conventional machines and the general short supply as concerns the funds available for such investments.
The reason the investment required is rather considerable because of the large volume taken up by the prefabricated-strip reel presently being used.
Italian Pat. No. 22353 A/76, applied for on Apr. 15, 1976, and its corresponding U.S. Pat. No. 4,156,635 cover the Applicant's invention of a new marking strip which is extremely thin, thus satisfying the requirements of low cost and low volume.